The Sultan and the Queen

by Jerry Brotton

  Not for the first time, the Englishman’s reckless behavior managed to save him. When summoned by Boris to answer de Mello’s charges, “being by that graceless and ungrateful friar further provoked, he, not able, though instantly he should have died for it, to suppress his heat, gave the fat friar such a sound box on the face, his double cause of choler redoubling his might, desire of revenge withal augmenting the same, that down falls the friar, as if he had been struck down with a thunderbolt.”49 Remarkably, instead of arresting him for such violent behavior, the Russians were impressed by Sherley’s “courage and high resolution,” and promptly dropped the charges against him. In response he mentioned that de Mello had been secretly celebrating the Roman Catholic mass during his stay in Moscow. Catholicism was detested and outlawed by the Russian Orthodox tsar, who immediately banished de Mello to the Solovetsky Monastery on the White Sea (which in the 1920s became one of the earliest labor camps in the infamous Soviet gulag).

  His honor partly restored, Sherley wintered in Moscow and prepared to leave in the spring of 1600. He now wrote to his supporters back in London, justifying his actions and positioning himself for a return to England. In February he sent a letter to the counselor of his patron the Earl of Essex, Anthony Bacon, elder brother of the queen’s counselor Francis. In his letter Sherley boasted of his achievements in Persia. “I have opened the Indies for our merchants,” he fantasized, with the result that “they shall have more power than the Portuguese, through Persia they may bring as secure as between London and St. Albans.” Spinning ever more fanciful and grandiose schemes, Sherley professed to be in correspondence with “the King of Tabur [Lahore],” the “mightiest king of the Indies,” the Mughal emperor Akbar the Great. He claimed Akbar “hath desired of me some man which knows the wars to discipline his men,” and that he was ready to send a Captain Thomas Powell, at that time in Persia with his brother Robert, to assist him in attacking the Portuguese. Sherley’s extravagant plans did not end there. He had an even crazier scheme to conquer the Indies that involved the illegitimate children of the unfortunate Portuguese pretender Don António (who had died in poverty in Paris in 1595). He suggested that “if any of Don António’s sons will come into his [Akbar’s] country he shall be assisted with money and men, for the recovering of the rest of the Indies.” Unsurprisingly, Bacon did not rise to this lurid fantasy of an alliance between Portuguese renegades and Mughal Indians dislodging the Habsburg-controlled Portuguese in the Indian Ocean.

  In any case, back in London Anthony Bacon was facing far more pressing matters. The previous year his master Essex had been appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland with the task of defeating the country’s Catholic chieftains, who were led by Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone. The subsequent military campaign was a complete disaster. Essex agreed to a humiliating peace with O’Neill against the queen’s explicit orders and then fled Ireland for London in September 1599. His reckless actions left him in deep disgrace with Elizabeth, who placed him under house arrest in London over the winter of 1599–1600. As Sherley spun ever more improbable tales of grand political strategy, one of the few men capable of ensuring his honorable return to England was losing the capacity to do so.

  In June 1600 Sherley and his party abandoned Moscow and retraced Anthony Jenkinson’s steps toward Arkhangelsk on the White Sea. There he wrote to Essex, clearly having been informed of the earl’s arrest and political isolation, telling him, “I am plunged in grief to hear of your Lordship’s misfortunes, but my devotion to you is as great as ever.”50 This did not prevent him from meeting Muscovy Company merchants and writing to Essex’s rival Robert Cecil, much to the dismay of the Essex faction. Sherley knew he was in disgrace for leaving England without royal permission and, even worse, brokering a Persian alliance that now threatened to upset Elizabeth’s cordial relations with the Ottomans (the queen was currently preoccupied with the elaborate exchange of gifts with Safiye Sultan). With his habitually florid and unintentionally comical style he tried to be contrite: “Yet do I upon the knees of my heart acknowledge the greatness of my fault in departing from her majesty without the blessedness of her gracious favor,” he began. But then he bragged, “I have laid open the treasures of other countries for her subjects,” adding, “I have only used the favor and love of the king of Persia for her glory.” He then apologized for further delaying his return home. “Neither is it my will,” he maintained unconvincingly, “that I am first gone to the Emperor of Germany,” the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. Still, he could not resist offering the queen a little advice, pointing out that Tsar Boris had a daughter and if Elizabeth could find a suitable “gentleman of spirit whom she will vouchsafe to call cousin” then an Anglo-Russian marriage would be “to the infinite benefit of her merchants.”51

  Robert Cecil was unimpressed. He wrote to Ambassador Henry Lello in Constantinople, another victim of Sherley’s duplicity, complaining of Sir Anthony’s arrogance in having “taken upon him to be an ambassador to the princes of Europe, to unite themselves in a league with the Persian, for which purpose he came through Muscovy.” Cecil reported that the queen’s fury over Sherley’s reckless scheme had been intensified as he had had “the audacity to write to the queen for leave to come to her. . . . Hereupon her majesty increased her former displeasure toward him . . . as by no means she will suffer him to come into the kingdom.”52

  The way home was now closed. Perhaps Sherley knew, because his behavior became even more impulsive and erratic. As the embassy prepared to leave Arkhangelsk, the Persians accused him of stealing the shah’s thirty-four cases of presents for the Christian princes and selling them off through the local Muscovy Company agents. Sherley denied this, claiming that he had opened the cases and found that the gifts were an embarrassment, and worth only a fraction of their estimated value of 400,000 crowns. Rather than risk humiliation by presenting them to Europe’s rulers, Sherley said he had quietly sent them back to Persia. Whatever happened, they were never seen again, and the imputation that Sherley had profited from them blighted the rest of the embassy.

  In late June the embassy sailed out of Arkhangelsk, traveling first to Stade, then to Emden on the German coast, which they reached on August 30, 1600. Over the next three months they traveled in state through Germany, entertained by delighted and astonished princes as they moved south toward Rudolf’s court in Prague. They arrived in Prague without much incident on October 11, and at Rudolf’s expense settled into a luxurious lifestyle. Sherley quickly racked up his usual mountain of debt and had his portrait engraved alongside Ali Beg’s by the court artist Aegidius Sadeler. The Venetian ambassador Piero Duodo reported, “What the mission of this Embassy may be we do not know yet,” but he believed that “it is a matter of moment and that there is question of a written treaty. There are other and wilder rumors, that the Persian will become a Christian.”53

  Within weeks the two ambassadors had been granted an audience with the curious emperor Rudolf. Duodo followed events with a keen interest and on November 8 he reported to the Seignory: “Yesterday the ambassadors from the King of Persia had an audience. The Englishman spoke in Spanish, and the substance of that king’s offer to his imperial majesty [Rudolf] was that he would arm against the Turk, and would also make the Arabs and the Georgians take the field with him.”54 The Venetian noted with satisfaction that the Spanish ambassador was appalled by the proposed alliance, which threatened Spain’s interests by proposing to divert the spice trade overland through Russia and into the Low Countries.

  Rudolf was clearly impressed by Sherley and Ali Beg. He issued a formal response to their orations almost immediately, announcing that it was “right pleasing” to receive them, and that he would propose an alliance “with other Christian Princes against the Turk,” whom he had “been struggling against without intermission.” He pointed out that he had “already attempted to form a league with other Sovereigns. He will do his best to secure such a league; and meantime he promises that he wil
l continue the war with all his might, and will omit nothing which may be needed to break the power of the Turk. He will summon a Diet of the Empire, will raise funds, and will urge all Christian nations to join him; he will send embassies, and will endeavor to prohibit the commerce of Christians with Turks.” If the Persians “should do much the same on his side with the Georgians and Muscovites,” they could anticipate an irresistible military alliance and “the following spring should see a joint attack.”55

  Rudolf’s bellicose rhetoric was in fact not much more than a minor variation on ineffectual Christian calls for crusade stretching back hundreds of years. The proposal began to unravel almost immediately. Rudolf’s advisers suggested that Sherley and Ali Beg report back to the shah, to whom the emperor would send his own messengers with a formal offer of a military and political alliance. Their refusal aroused suspicions: did this vain and profligate Englishman have the authority to propose a pan-European alliance with Persia when everyone knew that Elizabeth was in league with the Turks? Even if it were politically feasible, the Venetian diplomat Duodo noted that the coordination of a war against the Ottomans was logistically impossible. During the winter of 1600–1601, the astute Venetian was busy discovering Sherley’s plans, writing triumphantly to the doge, “I suspected some secret negotiation, and my suspicions were just.” He provided a devastating assessment of Sherley’s threadbare scheme and increasingly straitened circumstances. “His object is to divert the India trade altogether from Egypt, and send it through Muscovy. Grand schemes, impossible to accomplish. I have seen his credentials; they do not give him the title of ambassador, which the Persian who is with him has. He has spent much and made presents. Although living at his majesty’s charges, he has contracted 46,000 thalers of debt; and his creditors are after him.”56

  It was time for Sherley to move on once more, and in February 1601 he left Prague and his debts behind and headed for Italy. He went with Rudolf’s blessing and more than two thousand of his florins. With the proposals for an alliance quietly dropped, it must have felt more like a payoff, the relieved Rudolf happy to see the back of the troublesome Englishman and his sullen Persians. Slowly but surely, doors started shutting on Sherley. He planned to travel to Venice, but when he sent emissaries ahead to announce his imminent arrival, they returned with news that a Turkish delegation had arrived, and considering Sherley’s anti-Ottoman credentials it would be “inconvenient” for him to enter the city. They headed instead for Rome via Florence, where a Medici representative gave a damning assessment: “This Englishman does not appear bodily hale and sound to me. I know nothing about his soul. His face does not strike my fancy. I feel that if we were to go to an inn together for dinner, I would end up with the bill.”57

  Events seemed to be taking their toll on Sherley, who spent the whole journey to Rome fighting with Ali Beg over their formal titles and the lost presents. “They arrived in such a state of hostility over precedence,” remarked the Spanish ambassador in early April 1601, “that they came to blows” and had to be separated.58 Oblivious to their behavior, Pope Clement VIII received them with great public fanfare. Like Rudolf II, he hoped—somewhat optimistically—that the Persians offered a chance to challenge the Ottomans’ military supremacy. The French cardinal Arnaud d’Ossat was not so sure; he reported that “the Pope has given them lodging in the Borgo, near St. Peter’s,” over which they fought for the best apartment, and that no audience had been arranged because “each claims the right to precede his companion.” Sherley claimed priority as a Christian, but Ali Beg accused him of lacking formal diplomatic credentials and reiterated the charge of stealing presents that the Persian might have presented to Pope Clement. Having fought on their arrival, they even returned to their lodgings and “fell on each other on the staircase.” It was another farcical scene, but also tragic for a proud and haughty man like Sherley that a statesman like d’Ossat should regard him as absurd and his mission as faintly comical. “Perhaps someone may be found,” wrote d’Ossat drily, “who shall tell them that since they, being but two and sent by the same prince on the same mission, cannot agree between themselves, they will find it difficult to bring about a union of so many Christian princes and others in order to ruin the Empire of the Turk.”59

  It seemed nothing could be done to resolve their difficulties, until finally a compromise was reached. Both men were named “orators” and given separate audiences with the pope. On April 25, Sherley went first, sitting cross-legged in the Persian fashion before Clement, assuring him that “God had so touched the heart of his master [Shah Abbas] that he and all his kingdom might be converted.” The pope’s obvious delight at this news evaporated at the following day’s audience when Ali Beg accused Sherley of all kinds of “fraud and craft,” from embracing Islam to stealing the pope’s gifts. The diplomatic consensus was that Clement took the Persian’s side “because he has always spoken consistently. The Englishman is doubtless a liar and unreliable though a great talker and well informed.”60

  It was at this time that news from London reached Rome about Sherley’s patron the Earl of Essex. On Sunday, February 8, 1601, the disaffected Essex had left his house on the Strand and marched into the City with three hundred armed supporters. Londoners refused to support him, and by Sunday evening he was under arrest for treason. On February 25, he was beheaded at the Tower of London.61 The devastated Sherley had lost his biggest patron. It didn’t take him long to cast around for another. In April the Spanish ambassador wrote to King Philip III about Sherley’s situation. “The Englishman was very much bound to the Count of Essex,” he declared, “and since the latter’s imprisonment and death, he is completely without hope of ever again being admitted to the presence of the queen. . . . [As a result] he is determined to serve your majesty if your majesty should so desire.”

  Sherley was playing all angles. D’Ossat told the French court that Sherley had visited him and “wished to be my servant,” offering his services to Henry IV. The wily cardinal advised caution, revealing that the Spanish “have exploited and interrogated” Sherley already, “and have made him fine offers in order to win him over to their side, as much by reason of their ancient designs against England as for these affairs of Persia and the Turk. And it may be that he, being far from his own country and in need of money, will accept a post from the Spaniards, who pay more willingly for wrong-doing than for any other thing.”62

  Another event seems to have propelled Sherley into the arms of the Spanish. On April 30, the Jesuit Robert Parsons, rector of the English College in Rome, wrote a letter to a fellow Jesuit in England that made extraordinary claims about Sherley. In it Parsons insisted that he “denieth himself to have been a Protestant ever since his first being at Venice [in 1598] for that there he was reconciled [to Catholicism]. . . . And since his being at Prague, and here also, he hath used to frequent confession every seven or eight days.” Parsons also reported that over Easter Sherley had dined at the English College, where he discussed the “likelihood of casting religion [missionary work] in Persia.” Parsons added that Sherley “hath no great minds to return any more into England as well for that the Earl of Essex and most of his special friends are gone,” and that “the queen resteth £22,000 in his debt.”63 Honesty and modesty had never been Sherley’s strongest qualities, but even by his standards these revelations of conversion and treachery were shocking. He never confessed to the exact time or place of his conversion. Maybe it was genuine, but given the circumstances it smacks of desperation. Perhaps it was another example of his claim that religion was a pragmatic “uniter of men’s minds,” no more than a “toy.” Perhaps he was now lost in such a tangled web of deceit that he could no longer tell the difference between belief and disbelief.

  On May 10, 1601, Pope Clement officially dismissed the ambassadors, giving them both a thousand crowns in an effort to get rid of them as quickly as possible. Their destination was ostensibly Spain, to deliver the shah’s letters to King Philip III, bu
t to all intents and purposes the embassy was over, destroyed by factionalism, rivalries and apostasy. The Persian cook, barber and undersecretary all converted to Catholicism and vowed to stay in Rome, while the mortified Ali Beg left immediately for Spain. En route, another three members of his surviving retinue converted, including his nephew Uruch Beg, who was baptized Don Juan, settled in Spain and wrote a colorful memoir of his escapades. For some reason Sherley did not travel with them but stayed in Rome. At this stage his activities become more opaque than ever. He wrote offering his services to the Stuart king James VI of Scotland, perhaps aware that James was the most likely candidate to succeed the aged Elizabeth. James appears to have been taken in by Sherley, and he would prove to be a remarkably forgiving ally over subsequent years. Sherley wrote darkly that he was about to leave Rome “and am gone in that sort that, except the Pope himself, no man knoweth whither.” The intimation was clear: despite the dismissal of his embassy, his conversion had led him to offer to spy for Clement. Whether he had actually made such an offer, and if so whether it had been accepted, is unknown. By the end of May 1601, Sherley had claimed at one point or another to be working for England, Scotland, Spain, France, Persia and the pope, representing Muslim, Protestant and Catholic interests. The only significant power missing was the Ottomans, but his path to them was closed, because a servant had stolen his Persian letters and sent them to Constantinople.